The Resurrected Compendium (25 page)

The cities began to fall.

And Kelsey walked.

Her feet got tougher, except for that cut on her sole that still ached and itched and throbbed and broke open every once in awhile to ooze thick pus and blood. Her nails broke. Her hair grew dark at the roots. She hadn’t worn mascara in what felt like a lifetime, hadn’t looked in a mirror. She scavenged and scrounged and hid away from the world, what did it matter what face she wore to do it?

Sometimes, cars passed her even on the rural roads. If she heard one coming, Kelsey usually managed to blend into the brush or hunker down in a ditch, but none of them even slowed as they passed her. Sometimes she heard the far-off wail of sirens or the rumble of big trucks, and she stayed as far away as she could. She bathed in gas station bathrooms and shoplifted energy bars. Once she blew a guy for an egg-and-cheese biscuit, and afterwards he told her to take whatever she wanted from the store, to fill her pack, because he was getting the hell out as soon as his buddy came to pick him up.
 

“Shit’s going down,” he told her, and offered her a cigarette. Kelsey had never smoked, but took it anyway. “My buddy says this State of Emergency bullshit’s gonna become martial law. Anyway, I’m out of here. I’m going North, to my ex. I figure, if the world’s gonna end…”

He shrugged and gave her a surprisingly sweet grin. “Well, you gotta be with the ones you love. Right?”

Kelsey agreed, but didn’t take him up on his offer to go with him and his buddy. She’d grown up in the North. It got cold in the winter, hard as it might be to believe in the middle of summer, but it would. And if the world really was ending, she intended to be warm.

She filled her pack with crackers and as much water as she could fit, and she wished the attendant luck. She hadn’t asked his name or told him hers, but he shook her hand almost formally just before she went out the door. The bell hanging from the top jangled. She looked at him once, over her shoulder, and he waved.
 

Three days later, she wished she’d taken more water, no matter how heavy it would’ve made her pack. She’d been on a long stretch of nothing but worn and pitted asphalt without so much as a dirty creek running alongside. She didn’t want to venture too far off the road — her memories of maps included vast expanses of forests in which a girl could get very, very lost, and she was far from prepared to survive in the woods. She was barely making it as she was, camping with a single blanket and a few packs of matches, her scavenged and scrounged supplies. At some point, she realized, she would need to look for a town, if for no other reason than she needed to find out what was going on in the rest of the world.

Kelsey was used to the slashing teeth of hunger. Once a fatty, then slender, her stomach had never lost its love for being full. But she could deal with being hungry. What she really needed, craved, what she desperately wanted so fiercely it was worse than hunger, was a shower. A long, hot shower with lots of soap and shampoo to clean her matted hair. She’d kept it pulled back from her face in twin braids, but not even the cute style could keep it from getting filthy. It was hot in the south in summer, and she sweated. A lot.

The ache in her foot ebbed and throbbed as she walked. She was so fucking thirsty she’d have dropped to her knees and sucked up filthy water from a puddle, if there’d been any to suck. She scanned the sky but caught no sight of storm clouds, no sign of any impending rain. She was hot, too, and pulled at the throat of her t-shirt to fan herself. Wet armpits, her crotch a swamp. Her head spun.

Fever. Kelsey had a fever. When she stopped on the side of the road to pull off her boot, it didn’t seem as big as it had. Her foot had swollen. She peeled off the sock, then dug for the nail scissors, the blades dulled and gummed by cutting the duct tape. Somehow, she managed to cut the last layers away. Her foot beneath was pale and pruned like something dug up from under a rock. The smell, horrific, made her gag. She’d have puked if there’d been anything in her stomach to lose.
 

The wound pulled apart like a lipless mouth, scarlet inside. Oozing. When she pressed on the edges, the skin parted further to release a gush of thick, green pus tinged with black. She had to turn her face to the side, the world swimming, and breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth. She couldn’t afford to pass out.
 

The pain wasn’t bad, but the heat spread rapidly up her ankle and to her calf as she probed at the cut. It wasn’t even that long or deep, a stitch or two would’ve taken care of it had she been given proper medical attention when it first happened. Now here she was on the side of a country road in the middle of nowhere, maybe North Carolina, maybe Virginia or Alabama or Ohio, for all she knew, and all she wanted to do was lie down in the dirt and maybe…just…die.

“Fuck that. Fuck that noise.” Kelsey’s voice growled out of her throat with a sound like coffee beans in a grinder. She swiped at her face to clear her vision, realized the blurriness was not from sweat, and put her head between her knees.
 

She had lived through a water tornado and fought off resurrected corpses. She’d fended for herself on the road for two weeks, three weeks, however long it had been. Her entire life she’d done what she had to, and she would just keep doing it.

 
She had not survived her grandmother’s love just to give up now.

She needed medicine. And walking would be next to impossible, since she had no more duct tape and doubted she could force her foot back into the boot without a lot of effort. She screamed when she tried, the pain sudden and bright and flaring. It forced her down and kept her there.

Hey girl. Get up. Get up and walk, you stupid little bitch.

But this time, her grandmother’s voice didn’t work. Kelsey couldn’t move. She wept without tears, her cheeks burning so hot they disappeared the moment they slid from her eyes.
 

She dreamed of mountains made of chocolate cake.
 

She dreamed of cold, clear water.

And then the car came. She heard it from far away, her cheek pressed to the gravel. A low rumble, the crunch of tires on the asphalt, the whoosh of wind flowing over metal and across glass. She heard the sound of freedom, and it was coming straight for her.

Kelsey got to her feet, her pack on the ground beside her and her wounded foot lifted so only the toes touched the ground. To do more than that sent shudders of blackness shivering across her vision. The pain had faded again to the dull throb, but she remembered how quickly it could turn to agony.

It seemed she waited forever, but at last the car came into view just in front of the shimmering puddle mirage where the road dipped out of sight. It drove with indescribable slowness, weaving a little back and forth across the yellow. It stopped about five feet away from her, then inched forward. The road crunched beneath its tires.

A late-model Benz, ivory in color. A shape behind the wheel. This kind of car turned heads when it passed on the highway, it was just that nice. It could’ve been a rust-garroted jalopy, and Kelsey wouldn’t have cared.

She bent, gathered her things, fought her swimming head. She moved forward. Put a hand on the door, the metal warm and slick under her fingertips. She looked through the window. A man inside.

A gust of cold, not tepid, not merely cool, but frigid and delicious wafted over her when she opened the door. Kelsey drank it in like wine, though not with the finesse with which she’d trained herself to drink that beverage. She gulped it, gobbled, snorted and snuffled it. She sank into the passenger seat, lolling, her feet still outside the door.

The man looked at her. He wore a tailored designer suit. Silk tie. A gold and diamond ring on his finger that winked when he shifted gears. She knew the labels, recognized the cut of his hair. Once upon a time he’d been the sort of man she’d have smiled for and fluttered her lashes.
 

“Close the door,” he said.

Kelsey managed, with effort, to pull herself upright and yank the door closed. She settled into the leather seat with a sigh. Her hand batted at the seatbelt but didn’t tug it across her lap; she looked at the driver. He stared at the road, his fingers tight gripped on the steering wheel. After a minute, a very long minute, he turned on the radio. Then he put the car into gear and drove.

Kelsey let her hot face rest against the cool glass of the window. He didn’t ask her where she was going, and it didn’t seem important to tell him. He would take her somewhere, eventually. And if he thought that place was a hotel room or a truck stop parking lot or even the side of the road, well…she’d dealt with his sort before. She could deal with it again.

He faced the empty road with grim concentration, never looking her way. Every so often he’d tap his fingers against the steering wheel in time to the music that went on and on. At last a voice broke in and Kelsey tensed, forcing herself to pay attention. But it wasn’t the news, it was an advertisement for a used car lot, and after that, a peppy voice started talking about a concert tour and its local stops.

“Four days ago,” the man said.

Kelsey shifted on the smooth leather and found her voice. “What about it?”

He waved a hand toward the radio. “That show. Four days ago. Didn’t happen, I mean, they didn’t go on, they didn’t even cancel officially or anything, they won’t have to refund the tickets. But four days ago, that band was supposed to play, and I was supposed to take my daughter. She’s crazy about the lead singer.”

Kelsey had no response, and he seemed to expect none. They drove on, listening to the music and the DJ’s patter. Everything was old, she realized. It wasn’t a live broadcast.

“Because they’re all dead,” she said aloud.

The man’s gaze flicked toward her, then back to the road as though he were afraid if he looked away he’d somehow lose control even though he still drove no more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour. “We’re all dead.”

“I’m not dead.”

“We are all dead,” he repeated. “Every last fucking one of us. Some of us are up and walking, that’s all.”

Kelsey was silent for a minute or so, watching the world crawl by outside. “I’m hungry.”

The man said nothing. She closed her eyes and let her head fall against the glass again. Her foot ached and throbbed, but so long as she didn’t move it, she could almost pretend it was okay. She listened to the sound of the engine and the cold air whooshing from the vents and the crunch and grit of the tires on the road. She wanted to sleep, but couldn’t quite manage. And slowly, slowly, the car drifted to a stop.

Kelsey opened her eyes, already knowing what she’d see. She sat up higher in her seat, glad she hadn’t bothered with the seatbelt. The man hadn’t put the car in Park, he simply let his foot slide off the gas. He still held the wheel, but his head had fallen forward against it. His shoulders heaved. She thought he was crying, but in another minute knew the choked sounds were laughter.

“We are all dead.” He laughed louder. “All of us dead. We are all dead.”

He turned to her, his eyes wide. Nostrils flaring. His mouth had cracked in the corners, oozing blood. His tongue, thick and coated black, crept out to stroke along his lips.
 

And then, yawning, he tipped back his head. He choked and screamed with terrible hilarity as the stuff exploded out of him. He shook with the force of it. He turned to her, his eyes wide and blue and stunned, his mouth split so wide she could see the glimpse of his jawbone. He lurched toward her, grappling. His teeth snapped a hair’s breadth from her nose.
 

Her fingers found the pen in his pocket. Mont Blanc, heavy and expensive, the sort of pen Kelsey had promised herself when she got her next promotion. He was choking on his own blood and scrabbling at the hole in his throat half a minute later. When she stabbed his eyes, one tried to come out stuck to the end of the pen but was pulled back by the taut bundle of optic nerves. She carved a slash through his cheeks, then across his forehead while he howled and slapped at her with crooked fingers. Then she shoved the pen straight up his nose, and his one good eye rolled backward into his head. His feet thumped, dancing, but his fingers went limp. She pushed him, hard, and he flew back against the driver’s side window hard enough to star the glass with the back of his head.

“Fuck you,” Kelsey said. “I’m not dead.”

29

Dennis had plenty of food, but he still lined up the sight and let his finger stroke lightly on the trigger. He wasn’t that fond of squirrel, the meat too gamey and too much work to get off the bone for his taste, but beggars couldn’t choose the horses they’d ride, right? Something like that, anyway. The food, even the stuff in cans and boxes, wouldn’t last forever. Best he get used to fending for himself now rather than later.

He didn’t shoot the squirrel. The shotgun would cut the thing in half, splatter most of it in a spray of blood and bone. There’d be nothing left to eat. Still, he could’ve shot it if he wanted to. He knew it. Instead, he eased his finger from the trigger with a whispered “pow,” and lowered the gun. Best to save the ammunition, though for now he had plenty of that too.
 

But he wouldn’t always.

Dennis had never been a Boy Scout, there hadn’t been time or money for that. No dad to take him to the meetings. But he did believe in the importance of always being prepared. You couldn’t argue with that, and anyone who did was a fool who deserved to end up hungry and cold. Dennis couldn’t say as he thought you’d deserve to end up getting your face ate off by the little girl from next door, but then again, when you were ready to tackle any situation you probably would be able to fend off a rabid toddler with a sudden taste for human flesh.

Everything was falling apart, and Dennis didn’t like that. A world without fast food burgers and cable television seemed like a sad place to him. But he wasn’t surprised, because he was prepared. He’d been prepared his whole life, thanks to his mother, who’d raised him on a steady diet of conspiracy theories and tin-foil caps. She’d honed him with late-night drills and hours of survival instruction, preparing him for everything from alien invasion to walking corpses.